Thursday, September 3, 2015

VMware has a nice KB for collecting diagnostic data for View Products, but the Mac section is a little lacking. As a result, I've often times had to work with Admins and their end-users to try and schedule times we were all available just to collect a simple log bundle.

In order to minimize the need for such a web-ex session, I've written a quick and dirty script to pull the necessary logs and put them into a nice .zip file ready for uploading to your View Administrator or VMware Support. The idea is for the script to flow as much like an application as possible, making it dead simple for the end-user.

Introducing Horizon Collector

Some things to note about this script:

This works for Horizon View (not legacy 'VMware View')

This has only been tested in OSX Yosemite (10.10.5)

To gather USB Arbitrator logs (for USB related issues) you must run the script as root (sudo)

The script allows you to seamlessly upload your logs to a VMware Support Request if desired

DEBUG logging options are available if requested by your administrator or VMware Support - just follow the prompts.

You can download the script >>> on Github <<< if you'd like to get your fork on.

Usage and tips

To run the script, launch Terminal (Applications > Terminal) and execute the shell script:

sudo ./HorizonCollector.sh

For the Terminal boycotters

To initiate the script by double-clicking instead of invoking via Terminal, change the extension from .sh to .command, then simply double click the file. However, best practice is to run it with sudo like the example above.

It's a very simple script to perform a very simple task, but hopefully this can help save some time and headaches for those who are intimidated by the instructions laid out in the VMware KB!

Future versions of the script will be available on Github and included on Updates to this post.Special thanks to Jeremy McCoy!

The latest version and changelog will always be available on my Github page

Let me know in the comments if you benefited from the script and what else you'd like to see it do. Thanks!